VidAngel Service Review

I like movies. I like watching them, discussing them, writing about them, and reading about them. Unfortunately, many otherwise great films have been ruined by unnecessary sex scenes and an exorbitant amount of profanities. Fortunately, there are some services that help with that. ClearPlay is one of those services, but it requires a DVD, which with the coming death of the video rental store, typically means either buying it or borrowing it from a friend. There is, however, a service that will allow you to rent a filtered movie: VidAngel. I recently tried it out, and this is a review of my experience.

VidAngel filters movies, much like ClearPlay does. The difference is that it’s an online service. The movies you buy or rent are purchased or rented through Google Play and YouTube. After being directed to Google to purchase a rental, you are redirected back to the VidAngel website, where they host the video from Google (I only did the rental, so I can’t speak as to how a purchase works). Once you begin the rental period, you have 48 hours to view the movie.

The service works by subscription, with $15 per month, which gives you, according to their website, 5 rentals per month, a $10 value. The free trial works by giving you a Google Play credit.

The coolest feature of this service is the filter. On ClearPlay there are filters for different kinds of content and you can choose a level of sensitivity. VidAngel’s filter has a lot more detailed options than that, which is by far the thing I like most about the service. It has a pretty strict default setting (including a tight restriction on violence, which some users may want to turn off), but has potential for a lot of customization. You can choose whether or not to mute specific words, and even gives a brief description of specific sexual scenes to let you decide whether or not to skip them (terms similar to rating descriptions, such as “female nudity” or “sex scene”).

When playing the rental, problems were at a minimum. There were some small problems getting the video to buffer, but that was due to YouTube and not the service. After giving it a couple of minutes to begin buffering, we were able to watch the film all the way through without interruption (your success with this will depend on your internet service. It will only stream as well as YouTube normally does; this is dependent on YouTube itself, not VidAngel. VidAngel only applies the filter). The filter worked beautifully, not missing a beat. If you’re familiar with ClearPlay, this filter worked equally well, shifting seamlessly through the film.

In short, the service is a great option for those who want to rent filtered movies.

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Logan Judy is a Christian blogger and science fiction author with a Batman complex. At Cross Culture, Logan writes about film, comics, cultural analysis, and whatever else strikes his fancy. In addition to his work at Cross Culture, Logan also blogs and podcasts at A Clear Lens. You can find him tweeting about Batman, apologetics, and why llamas will one day rule the world, @loganrjudy.

First, I’d be mindful to say about people you don’t know personally that they are “anything but Christian,” especially since these allegations as you put it have not been verified. Also, VidAngel is not a review company, and I couldn’t even find any of this so-called SEO scam review postings by doing Google searches. As to the claims about it being a “scam site,” I used the service myself (which is what this blog post is about), so I can say without any question in my mind that that is not the case.

Tried vid angle, did not have the same experience. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. We didn’t even finish the movie we rented because randomly it would stop editing. It also seemed to edit out a word and then the sound wouldn’t come back on, so we constantly had to get up pause it and play again to get it to work. Great in theory, to bad it doesn’t work. Won’t be waisting our money on this again.

Thanks for reviewing VidAngel on this post. I wanted to make a quick correction on pricing. Logan, we did some early testing in 2014 with a subscription. We launched a beta product in July 2014 on Google Play SD content with free filters.

Due to complaints associated with filtering Google Play movies (like the filter suddenly stopping Shana), and due to overwhelming requests for HD content, Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, etc, we are currently testing a brand new version of VidAngel.

The new service includes the filter for free, you just pay for the movie. And the movie pricing is similar to Redbox ($1.50 for SD and $2 for HD – see link for details). We’d love your feedback.

I’m not aware of any scripture that tells us to boycott a service or business simply because it was started by someone with a different religion. I don’t believe Mormonism to be Christianity, but there’s nothing about the service that preaches Mormonism, so I don’t see how a boycott on that fact alone is particularly Christian, or even particularly sensible.

There are differences in theology that I believe are significant enough that they ought to be considered a separate religion. For reasoning on that, I’d point you here -http://clearlens.org/2014/07/17/mormon-roleplay-two-issues/

That said, theological discussion on Mormonism is a bit beyond the scope of this site. But that link describes my position on the matter quite well, if you’re interested.

A CHRISTIAN IS A PERSON THAT BELIEVES IN CHRIST. I personally don’t know if any religion is in the slightest bit true. They could all be 100% made up for all I care, but it doesn’t matter what I think and it doesn’t matter what you think. BECAUSE by definition, Mormons ARE Christians.

Tom
ps – Chris·ti·an·i·ty
krisCHēˈanədē

noun

any religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices.

We absolutely love Vidangel! I would not normally bother to write a review but we are so happy with this service. We are finally able to view movies that we chose not to watch before due to some of the content. We have clearplay but found it to be a hassle and hardly bothered. The few times we had any problems we were credited back our money without even asking for it. We recommended them to anyone who likes movies with out the junk!

This is a amazing website! You can watch movies AND TV SHOWS with your whole family and kids and you can add as many filters as you like. Stuff like nudity, language, drugs, and MORE! All for only $1! They have amazing custom service. I have emailed them and usually within minutes get back with me https://www.vidangel.com?vip=560y8m8r